Anne Cassidy's Finding Jennifer Jones, a sequel to Looking for JJ, is a
powerful story that forces you to think about the nature of punishment and
forgiveness

It's a decade since Looking for JJ, the Carnegie shortlisted YA novel by Anne Cassidy was published. The sequel picks up the story of what happened to Jennifer Jones, who was 10 years old when she killed her friend Michelle.

The 2003 book ended with the killer, now called Kate Rickman, just starting her degree at Exeter University, having spent six years in institutions. Two years on, she is living in Exmouth, has a summer job in the Tourist Information Office and has a new probation officer. She also has a new name, Alice Tully. But the 17-year-old feels trapped in her new life and fake identity.

She's painfully unhappy, on anti-depressants and is sleeping around (she says she knows she is just seen as "an easy conquest"). In less assured hands, the treatment could have been sensational or sentimental but Cassidy presents a compassionate, yet unflinching portrait of a girl whose life has no direction and who is trying to make sense of her past.

Things begin to really unravel when she becomes the focus of police interest again, following the murder of a young girl near a beach where she had been picnicking alone.

She hates the way the suspicious detectives are treating her but Cassidy, 61, presents the conflicting emotions in a nuanced scene. You understand the police being incredulous when she wants an apology from them. To the police officers, to many people perhaps, she will forever be just a murderer. Her fear and paranoia is palpable. "Would they really not go home to their husbands, wives or partners and say Guess who I met today?", she muses.

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The gripping and well-paced story moves between Exmouth and London, as Alice contacts the third girl (Lucy Bussell) who was there on that fateful day when she killed her friend in a fit of temper. The twist allows Cassidy to make interesting points about public prurience over crime and about the issues of press intrusion. Perhaps the most telling conversation, though, is when Alice meets the woman who has written a book about her case, called Children Who Kill. That investigator finally forces her to think about the ramifications of her crime and to start to appreciate how many people – friends, family, teachers – had lives that have been badly affected by the emotional consequences of her crime.

Cassidy offers hope in the book (especially in the character of a boy 'Alice' meets called Jimmy Fuller) but ultimately Jennifer Jones is trapped in her own form of life sentence. She thinks all the time about her victim, who is "eternally ten years old".

Finding Jennifer Jones is a powerful story and it challenges the reader to consider what they think about punishment and rehabilitation. How much do any of us really believe in forgiveness?